I know water is good for my body, but can’t bring myself to drink it on regular basis. That’s before I started using the Water Your Body App for the iPhone.

It’s a simple concept, really. You just stack empty containers on a table until you reach a daily goal intake of water.

Water Page

The goal is set by calculations done on your weight. Roughly half your body weight in pounds, but in ounces.

You can hide your weight display and there’s even a password lock option, if you like.

There are four different types of containers to choose from and you can set the amount in ounces or milliliters. I use a glass with eight (8) ounces.

If you add a glass by mistake it can easily be removed.

Lifestyle Page

There are more factors you can set on the lifestyle page to help refine the total amount of water intake for the day.

• Minutes of exercise
• Breast feeding
• High altitude
• Pregnant
• Fever or Diarrhea
• Dry climate
• Extreme temperature

Graph Page

A monthly line graph shows each day’s percentage of water intake to goal and the overall monthly average. Today’s percentage and a monthly overall percentage is listed, along with a letter grade.

There’s an option to adjust the prior day’s water intake, should you forget to add those last few glasses at the end of the day.

Awards Page

The Awards page shows different trophy cups awarded after reaching certain milestones.  There’s an Options button that opens to a page where you can adjust:

• Icon Badge
• Stamps
• Time Format
• Stamp Style
• Goal Display
• Clear History

The button to the left of Options will either hide or view the history of each entry: date, amount, and time stamp.

Tips Page

The Tips page is a great source of knowledge about water, some useful, some merely nice to know.

There was a  tip about taking sips, mixing with saliva, then swallowing, that helped to change the way I drink water. Instead of gulping down 4 or 8 ounces at a time, I can now enjoy water in smaller increments.

Summary

Documenting the water I drink each day gives me objective criteria that allows my mind to participate in regulating my behavior, instead of just relying on my natural tendencies.

The Water Your Body App is something that is necessary for me personally. Using it helps me drink enough water so that I’m properly hydrated each day.

The app is $0.99 USD in the iTunes App store and well worth the price.

A version for the iPad is currently in production. I’m wondering if data will be synced with the iPhone app or whether they’ll be independent of each other.

I can’t wait to find out.

Related posts:

1. 14 Days of Health Challenge 2010
2. 44 Days of Health Challenge 2010
3. Halfway Point of Health Challenge 2010

SurveyMonkey has a free web-based service where you can create a survey, generate a link for email or a web page, and see the responses. They have a Pro plan and an Unlimited plan that are billed monthly or annually and have a lot more options. Click here for pricing and a detailed comparison of plans.

The Basic plan is free, and here is what you get:

• 10 questions per survey
• 100 responses per survey
• Intuitive, web-based survey tool
• 15 pre-designed question types
• Real-time results
• 24/7 customer support

You have to sign up for a SurveyMonkey account to get the Basic plan. And, while there is no cost, you have to give your email address, set a username, and password to get an account.

Check Out a Survey on SurveyMonkey

I decided to make use of this service for a couple of reasons.

1. To see what topics might be of interest for this blog (help pick the next blog post)
2. To let you see what SurveyMonkey looks like and give it a rating.

So two quick questions and you get to see how bad I am at my first survey design. Click here to take survey.

The web-based survey I put together was fairly simple and should be relatively easy for anyone to do. Especially with 24/7 customer support, which you don’t see very often with a free service.

I’m not sure how the survey will come across on mobile devices, but am hoping for the best. Let me know in the comments if your device doesn’t do well with my survey.

No related posts.

Top six? you say. Well, it just worked out that way since I decided to keep it to one-tweet-per-author. Besides, it’s my list. However, I did include a few honorable mentions.

Note: Clicking a tweet will whisk you away to the author’s tweet.

My Top 6 Tweets YTD

1. A guy thing.

2. Age sensitivity, or maybe just another guy thing.

3. I’m sticking with the guy thing.

4. A Tech thing. I followed @billgillam when he was picking up his iPad. (And maybe a guy thing)

5. Definition of fearlessness.

6. Exactly what I was thinking, except I’m not Irish.

Honorable Mention

These were in the running, but since I kept the top six to one-tweet-per-author these got crowded out. It was a close thing.

h1. Tickled my funny bone.

h2. Creative equation.

h3. I love this saying. (Another guy thing)

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Tweets of 2009

No reason to beat about the bush, here are four different ways to find new content on the internet.

• Google Reader Play
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Google Alerts

In my opinion, Google Reader Play is the easiest, Digg shows what others think important, StumbleUpon is my favorite because you customize the random offerings to your particular interests, and Google Alerts is the most specific.

One analysis shows that StumbleUpon and Digg drive just over 80% of the web traffic for social bookmarking sites, 51% and 30%, respectively. Guess that proves the old 80/20 rule.

Google Reader Play

Google Reader Play doesn’t require an account. Just go to the website and start viewing random content in a slide-show format.

Digg

Digg shows you content other people “Digg” or like. Content is arranged by topic and filtered by time-frame. An account is not required. (Currently Digg is not accepting new accounts. 12-Aug-2010)

Here are the different categories.

Below you can see each time-frame filter. Results are sorted, most to least popular.

Instead of the website, I use the Digg iPhone app regularly. Here are a couple of screen shots.

The time-frame filters are a little different for the iPhone app, which you can see at the bottom of the screen shot on the right.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a fantastic way to find new content, and sometimes a new content provider.

Sign up with your email address, choose a username and password, then pick topics that interest you.

On the left, different topic categories are shown, with the number of subtopics in parenthesis. The Sports subtopics are shown on the right. (click to enlarge)

Start Stumbling around the internet, one random site at a time. Guided by your particular interests, of course. That’s the key.

You can rate content by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down. About 75% of the content gets a thumbs up from me.

I’ve installed the StumbleUpon extension for Firefox, which works wonderfully in the browser. I also use the StumbleUpon iPad app quite frequently. (shown below, click to enlarge)

Google Alerts

I wrote a blog post on how to setup Google Alerts. My search term was Los Angeles Lakers. What I found out is that content came from far and wide. Local, regional, and national online newspapers, sports media like ESPN.com and NBA.com, and blogs aplenty. I have a Google Apps account so everything was viewed in Google Reader.

Timing of the content varied. A story would break and lots of content would show up, then a day or two later there would be more of the same story. Sometimes with a different angle, sometimes not. Unexpectedly, I found a new sports blog to check out.

If you have a specific search term, Google Alerts is a great way to find new content on your topic.

Related posts:

1. Using Google Alerts to Monitor Information That Interests You

Flipboard is billed as a social media magazine, but if you haven’t made the plunge with either Facebook or Twitter, this App may still satisfy with its varied content offerings.

If you have an iPad and a Twitter account then Flipboard is an app you must have. There’s a lot this app does right, and some things need improvement, but the way Twitter is visually presented covers all sins.

Flipboard has only two pages. The Flipboard Cover page sets the tone with a visually stunning, full-page picture. The Contents page has nine configurable sections that serve as an entryway to the  Flipboard “magazine” experience.

The Flipboard Cover Page

The Cover is a full-page picture doing the Ken Burns Effect for seven seconds or so, before cycling to the next image. Each picture shows the Title and Contributor in the lower-right corner of the screen.

A set of Recent Contributor icons at the bottom of the page can be touched to change the page content. (click the thumbnail to enlarge)

A white (sometimes hard to see) share button in the top-right corner gives you the current cover options for:

• Share Cover by Email
• Retweet on Twitter (Facebook content excuded)
• Share on Facebook (Facebook only)
• Hide

All of this is done within the app. The Hide option allows you to hide a contributor’s content after the app has restarted. A nice feature to be sure.

The Flipboard Contents Page

The Contents page has nine customizable sections. The first two seem to be reserved for Facebook and Twitter. You can move, delete, or add content by tapping Edit. Tap an empty square to Add a Section and you’ll get several categories, from which to choose content:

• Today’s Picks
• News
• Business & Finance
• Tech & Science
• Cool Curators
• Art & Design
• Lifestyle
• Entertainment
• Travel & Adventure
• Food & Dining

A category for public Twitter Lists is available, which is another nice feature.

My current sections are a Twitter feed, two Twitter lists, my Facebook feed, and five feeds for TechCrunch, GigaOM, Engadget, Wired and AllThingsD. (click on the thumbnail to enlarge)

Once you have content selected for all nine sections, the only way to add more content is to delete a current section. You can’t add more than nine sections of content. Bummer.

Inside the Flipboard Content

A full-page, magazine-style layout leaps out at you when launching a section of content. You flip pages just like a magazine. Touch an article and a pop-up window appears, with half-a-page of content, commentary in the lower-half, a Reply box at the bottom, a Share button, a Like button, and a Read on Web button.

The Like button engenders a Like on Facebook, and for all other content marks a Favorite on Twitter. Typing in the Reply box will enter a comment on Facebook, and everything else is a reply on Twitter.

Selecting Read on Web will launch the Flipboard browser to show the web content. There’s another Share button with options to: Share by Email, Retweet on Twitter, or Open in Safari.

I’ve had mixed results with the Flipboard browser and had to open some pages in Safari to do things like sign in to comment, and post to  Buzz, which the Flipboard browser failed more than once. It’s best to use the Flipboard Share button to Retweet because using the Retweet button on the page only worked about half the time for me.

Twitter on Flipboard

One of the main reasons to have Flipboard is to use it as your social media magazine. When you launch the Flipboard app for the first time you are asked for your email address so they can put you in queue for an invitation to link your Facebook and Twitter accounts. An email arrives then you can hookup to both Facebook and Twitter. I was in the queue four days.

Seeing Twitter on Flipboard is like a breath of fresh air. Some tweets with links are shown with the reference article as it would appear in a magazine. You don’t have niggle at the tweet content to figure out if the link is worth clicking on because much of the time it’s staring you right in the face.

Selecting a tweet will open the full-page pop-up box where you can reply in the Type your reply box, save as a favorite, Share by Email, Retweet on Twitter, or Hide.  The Hide button is a nice touch, where you can hide or show individual tweeters on Flipboard. You can also view a persons profile by touching their profile picture.

The Flipboard Twitter feed uses the name instead of the twitter handle, which can throw you off at first. I’m familiar with copyblogger and when I see Brian Clark with the same profile picture it takes a minute to compute.

Problems with Flipboard

Update frequency for Twitter is an unknown factor. I’ve opened up Flipboard in the morning and had nine-hour-old tweets waiting for me. Open and close Flipboard and you can get tweets that are eight minutes old, 22 minutes old, 41 minutes old; it’s unpredictable. I don’t know what’s driving the update frequency.

Leave the Flipboard application open and it seems that Twitter doesn’t update at all. This morning I had it open for three hours and Twitter never updated, even though I was switching between Facebook and different Tech feed content.

How about a REFRESH BUTTON for Flipboard in the next update?

At times the Facebook content looks to be out of chronological order. And the six pictures that were posted recently can be mixed with three older pictures, and also be out of sequence.

My Facebook page on Flipboard hasn’t updated all morning. I’m seeing new content sprinkled throughout the morning on my Facebook web page, but it’s not showing in Flipboard. Opening and closing the App is not making and difference.

Other times I open Flipboard and Facebook is current. Go figure. I can’t. If this app had a REFRESH BUTTON it would go to the top of my app list.

Problems aside, this app is still worth getting. I’m hoping improvements are on the way. I really like the look of Twitter on the Flipboard app. Or did I mention that already?

Related posts:

1. iPad First Impressions – Apps Decoded

Last December I began looking for some kind of electronic log to track food and exercise calories, as well as my weight, and I wanted this on a single iPhone application.

The Lose It! app fit these requirements and was free, so that’s the one I picked. I haven’t looked back since.

A Tech Tool for Weight Control and Fitness

Over the years I’ve learned that logging data throughout the day is particularly beneficial in two respects: 1) There is measure of discipline required, and 2) You get objective data, which allows monitoring and evaluation.

Both of these things bode well for weight control and fitness.

How Lose It! Works For Me

Since January of this year I’ve logged all food and exercise into the Lose It! app on my iPhone. It takes only a few minutes each day.

I like to enter my food roundabout the same time I eat, although I can “catch up” later if need be. The same thing goes for exercise.

Entering food and exercise activity is relatively easy. You can choose from the Lose It! database of foods, create custom foods, or the restaurant database (that keeps expanding). There’s an exercise database, where for each activity you can choose from different preset levels of time, speed, or intensity.

The screen shots blow depict the following steps to add cereal to my daily log.

• Add Food
• Choose Breakfast
• Choose My Foods
• List of My Foods
• Type “Whe” in the Search box
• Select Wheat Chex, and
• Add to Log

Lose It! Goals and Budget

Initial data inputs are gender, age, height, and starting weight. Add your current weight and the app will calculate the number of calories you need for a day.

Set a weight goal, and then pick a date to reach that goal. Choose how fast you want to lose weight, from 1/2 to 2 pounds per week, or just maintain your current weight. Based on these choices your Daily calorie budget is set.

The Net Calories so far today is equal to the number of Food calories consumed, minus the Exercise calories burned. You see this plainly on the My Day and Log screens, as well as your Budget calories.

Monitor Calories and Receive Reports

One key aspect of the Lose It! app is to enter your exercise and foods as they occur. Doing so provides a gauge to monitor your daily calories. The My Day page gives you a clear picture of your “budget” for the day.

Select the This Week tab to see bar chart of your budget. See previous weeks by tapping the arrow to the left of the week date. Note: the “week date” is a Monday.

The  Nutrients tab shows daily & weekly info for grams of fat, carbohydrates, and protein, as well as their percentages.

Lose It! has something they call Motivators: Reminders, email reports, and Twitter and Facebook updates. I have reminders set for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and end of day. The app will send me an alert if I haven’t logged in food by a certain time each day. I’ve also chosen to have a weekly report emailed to me. There’s an option to include a CSV file attachment for spreadsheet use. A daily report is also available.

You can also share progress with Facebook and Twitter integration. I haven’t taken things this far, but the option is available.

Lose It! Online

You can’t enter food or exercise in your online account at Loseit.com, but there are additional reports, more socialization (you can “friend” others) and forums for discussion on topics like: fitness and exercise, diet and nutrition, technical support, the kitchen sink, and feature suggestions.

Online Report Menu

Lose It! App Only Connects to One Device

In June I went through some fear and trepidation before upgrading to an iPhone 4. My main concern was the data accumulated since January. Six months of meals, snacks, exercises, and weight data were on my iPhone 3GS.

I decided to do a new install with the iPhone 4, which meant losing all the data from my iPhone 3GS. I took preventive measures by downloading data from my online Lose It! account so I could at least have a reference for foods that were created in the Lose It! app.

All of this was unnecessary. When I launched the Lose It! app on my new iPhone 4 and tried to log into my online account the app indicated I could only sync one iPhone or iPad with the Lose It! app.

When I clicked the “Connect this iPhone” button the app synchronized data with my online account. All the food and exercise logged since the first of the year, the foods that I had created, and my goals were all nicely transferred to my iPhone 4. Slick as a whistle. All my worries were for naught.

Using Lose It! to Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle

This app is easy to use, has lots of features, and is free. It’s a tech-tool to help monitor your food, exercise and weight. The information alone is worth its weight in gold for making objective decisions about your food and fitness.

However, there’s discipline required to use the app because logging all your food and exercise in a timely manner takes effort. Thankfully the app is simple to use. But then again, nobody said weight control was easy.

Related posts:

1. 14 Days of Health Challenge 2010
2. 44 Days of Health Challenge 2010
3. Halfway Point of Health Challenge 2010

On launch day I arrived at 5am and got my iPhone 4, 32GB activated just before 9am. Prior to leaving the store I did two things: 1) purchased a black Bumper, and 2) setup my Exchange Google Apps email, calendar and contacts.

Little did I know that the first mitigated a problem I didn’t know about and the second caused a niggling issue that Google has since fixed, finally. But first…

iPhone 4 – The Good Stuff

One of the main reasons I upgraded to the iPhone 4 is HD video and I love this new feature. Tap to Focus is a great addition and the new LED flash will stay on for video. I just shot some video in a very dark hallway and was surprised at the result; in a good way. Then again, the light switch cover wasn’t blinded with the bright light.

Using iMovie in combination with the HD video makes them an unbeatable video experience right now. Unexpectedly, I like iMovie’s size options for rendering the video output.

The 5 megapixel camera takes some nice pictures, even in low light conditions, and I really like the new zoom feature. The flash works better than expected, and is easily set to On, Off, or Auto by a tap on the screen.

The new front-facing, VGA-quality camera and video are both very handy. I used the camera for taking shots of myself with others. The front-facing video is great for recording personal messages. Switching front to back is done with a simple touch of the screen.

To make a FaceTime call requires another iPhone 4 and both phones on wi-fi. Since there’s no white iPhone 4 availability yet, and two of my sisters just got the iPhone 3G S model, I was up a creek, so to speak. No Paddle.

Then Apple emailed all new iPhone 4 users and provided the opportunity to test out FaceTime. I called up an Apple representative who demonstrated and explained the FaceTime features during a live call. Very futuristic. This may be my favorite, future feature. Can’t wait for the White iPhone 4. It’s available in the future, not right now.

The Retina display is great. I didn’t realize the difference from my 3GS until looking at Google Reader text while on the elliptical at the gym. The text is like type on paper. Very clear. The other thing I found amazing was taking screen shots on the iPhone 4 and then viewing them on the iPad. Wow! Very intense resolution.

As a side note, you can tell which developers have upgraded their app artwork. Just compare them to Apple’s Utilities apps, which are very clear and precise.

Apple Utilities Folder Drawer

Folders are another thing that gets a big thumbs up. I don’t use a great deal of apps, but my iPhone 3GS had nine pages. The iPhone 4 has only TWO pages and my apps are better organized.

The other nice addition is Multitasking. As I become accustom to what it can do, I’m using it more and more. I hope they beefed up the Home button. It’s getting a lot of action.

The first app that got WAY more attention was Pandora radio. And now my Walkmeter app will allow me to handle email, phone, and text messages without loss of GPS functionality.

But the new features in iOS 4 are only great for apps that are updated to utilize the new features or artwork. During the last two weeks app updates have been coming fast and furious, so things are improving quickly.

And these last two features, Folders and Multitasking, are so nice I’m wishing they were on my iPad. But I digress.

iPhone 4 -The Bad Stuff

First off, I’m disappointed that Apple hasn’t been able to produce a white iPhone 4. I really wanted to get one for my wife so we could start using FaceTime.

Auto-Lock Problem

The first bad thing I encountered was an iOS 4 issue. I updated my iPhone 3GS to iOS 4 on June 21 and noticed the screen Auto-Lock feature was reset to one (1) minute AND grayed-out so it couldn’t be changed. Not something to get overly worried about at the time because there were only three days until I picked up my iPhone 4.

But sure as the sun shines, after getting my iPhone 4 at the Apple store, arriving home and setting everything up in iTunes, the Auto-Lock feature was grayed-out and set at one minute. While this wasn’t high on my list of things to investigate – HD video, FaceTime, etc. – it was an irritant that had to be addressed at some point.

If you had a Google Apps account AND set up an Exchange account for email, contacts, and calendars, the Auto-Lock problem was yours to keep. Since I had been eagerly awaiting iOS 4 and it’s multiple push email accounts, I had set up multiple Google Apps email accounts with Exchange.

People who had removed Exchange email and reverted to IMAP saw the problem go away. I didn’t want to go that route and discovered Google was the source of the Auto-Lock problem. The Google Mobile Help Forum finally came through with some specific information. It seems Google wasn’t ready for iOS 4 yet.

Anyway, after waiting a lot and getting about 65 emails in response to the help forum posting, which was keeping me abreast of the progress, or lack of it, people finally started reporting that if they deleted their Exchange accounts and added them back again, the Auto-Lock problem went away.

Antenna Issue

The other issue, which has generated a lot of press, but a non-issue for me, is the “death-grip” problem. Since I had the Apple Bumper from the git-go, seeing the first video’s of AT&T’s reception bars go from full to none, while the iPhone 4 is being held with a left-handed grip, got me to try it out for my own self.

Sure enough, if I removed the Bumper and held the phone with my left hand, palm covering the lower left corner of the phone (where the band is located), the bars would go from full to none, and then start searching for service.

Strangely enough I tried to replicate this another day, but this time I was downstairs in the back of the house instead of upstairs in the front of the house, and it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t get the problem to repeat. The next day I tried again downstairs and sure enough, the bars were affected by my left-hand grip.

For me, it’s a non-issue. I use the Bumper, which is sort of awkward to hold, yet it keeps the metal band from getting scratched and the back from resting on a surface so it won’t pick up unnecessary wear scratches.

I was shocked that the iPhone’s “bars formula” has been wrong since the beginning, I’m interested to see what will happen when the new update comes out.

iPhone 4 -The Weird Stuff

My iPhone is doing this weird thing that’s hard to describe because a) it happened so fast and b) it was freaking me out. It happened a second time and now I’m better able to convey what it’s doing.

Both times I had an application open with my earphones on, and then:

The iPod app launches by itself and starts playing a song, but only for about three seconds, and then starts playing another song, again for about three seconds, and then the Voice Command app opens for a couple of seconds, and then the iPod app launches again and starts playing a song, for about three seconds, and then switches to a different song…

I finally power down the iPhone and start it up again, only to have this happen again! Same sequence.

That was the second time the weirdness happened. The first time I was coming back from a walk and I think that, along with the iPod app, the Messaging app started up as well. But don’t hold me to that because, like I said before, it was freaking me out.

I first thought this had something to do with the proximity sensor issue, but now believe that my $79 Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic have something to do with the weirdness. It’s not something I can objectify.

The second strange thing is with the picture/video thumbnails not showing correctly in the Camera Roll. Some pictures/videos are completely blank and others have a blank or black strip on two sides.

If I view pictures in the camera roll, then go back to taking some more pictures, and then switch back to the Camera Roll, the issue crops up in viewing the thumbnails. And sometimes the pictures I just took aren’t showing at all in the Camera Roll thumbnail view. However, if I navigate back to Albums and then go back into the Camera Roll, the issue fixes itself.

[Update] A few pictures I took on the 4th had black strips across two sides. This is not just weird, it’s bad. Hope they get a fix for this soon. I’m glad the pictures weren’t that good or this would be in the bad section.

Final Thoughts on the iPhone 4

There is a lot to like with the iPhone 4 and I’m happy for now. HD video and FaceTime were the main reasons, but the Retina display, Folders and Multitasking are great too.

But it seems like weak start for the new iOS 4, and the antenna issue seems un-Apple like. Yet I’m not holding my breath waiting for a refund on that Bumper I purchased.

No related posts.

On this blog I try to put together good content, which can sometimes take a great deal of time. My posts ALWAYS turn out longer than I’ve planned. It just works out that way. It’s in my DNA.

Contrast the length of my articles with Twitter’s 140 character limit and it becomes apparent there’s a large gap between the two. Thankfully, there is a platform that fills this slot.

Tumblr is described as a tumblelog, or short-form blog, where you can post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio. It gives me an opportunity to blurt out a shortened version of Technology and Life topics without spending a great deal of time. Hopefully with more variety and a slightly different flavor.

Tumblr even has an iPhone app, which allows me to bang out time-sensitive and travel-related information from a mobile platform.

Here’s an example of my new tumblelog, Vlatte on Tumblr. A shortened version of Technology and Life.  Check it out.